PUBLIC ART FUND
Spring 2011
EVA ROTHSCHILD: Empire
Opening March 1
Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park
ROB PRUITT: The Andy Monument
Opening March 30
Union Square
SOL LEWITT: The Structures
Opening May 24
City Hall Park
EVA ROTHSCHILD: Empire
March 1 – August 28, 2011
Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park
(Corner of 60th Street and Fifth Avenue)
Eva Rothschild’s new commission responds to the role of Doris C. Freedman Plaza as an important and heavily used entry point to Central Park. As a multidirectional archway, the sculpture draws awareness to the shifts between the realms of city and park, evoking the natural, muscular forms of the trees that line the site as well as the verticality of the buildings that border the Midtown Manhattan location. Rising to nearly 20 feet and lightly resting on the ground at ten different points, Empire is constructed out of four-inch diameter steel painted with red, green, and black stripes that visually destabilize the solid structure as it spiders over the center of the Plaza.
Major support provided by Jennifer & Matthew Harris and Tod Williams & Billie Tsien.
Additional funding provided by Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London; The Modern Institute, Glasgow; 303 Gallery, New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Supported by the British Council.
ROB PRUITT: The Andy Monument
March 30 – October 2, 2011
Union Square
(Corner of 17th Street and Broadway)
Rob Pruitt’s monument to Andy Warhol, the father of Pop Art and one of New York’s enduring cultural icons, will be installed at the northwest corner of Union Square just outside the building that housed his final Factory and just down the street from an earlier Factory location. The larger than life sculpture celebrates Warhol’s artistic and cultural legacy in the city he helped define, while its chrome surface reflects the neighborhood where he lived and worked. According to Pruitt, “Every day a thousand more kids come to New York propelled by [Warhol’s] legacy. Like Oscar Wilde’s grave at Père Lachaise, there should be a destination in New York to mark that journey. I think something needs to be in the streets of New York, something you could visit at 4:30 in the morning. The final nod to [Union Square’s] history and its heritage should be marked with the likeness of the man who personified a new way of making art and making culture.”
Major support provided by Con Edison, Rebecca & Martin Eisenberg, Katherine Farley & Jerry I. Speyer, and Holly & Jonathan Lipton.
Additional support from Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Made possible through the cooperation of the Union Square Partnership and the New York City Department of Transportation.
SOL LEWITT: The Structures
May 24 – December 2, 2011
City Hall Park
(Bordered by Broadway, Chambers Street, Centre Street, and Park Row)
In the first-ever outdoor career survey of Sol LeWitt’s sculptures—or “structures” as he called his three-dimensional works—Public Art Fund brings together large-scale pieces spanning 40 years that audiences have never before been able to view in juxtaposition with one another, including several major works that will be installed publicly in the United States for the first time. The show will include works from this seminal artist’s modular, serial, geometric, and irregular structures series installed on the lawns and sidewalks of the historic park. This exhibition provides an opportunity for those already aware of LeWitt’s sculpture to see a unique overview of his achievement; it also introduces a broad public to the artist’s work and ideas in depth. LeWitt, who lived in Lower Manhattan for much of his life, died in 2007, at the age of 78.
Special thanks to The Pace Gallery, New York.
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